Make America Naughty Again

As many of my readers know, I haven’t been able to quit my day job. Fortunately, the focus of my day job is intellectual property law–a legal realm sprinkled with just enough quirky issues to keep my day job fun.

One such example is the subject of my latest post on my law firm’s blog, entitled “Make America Naughty Again: The Risk of Risque Trademarks.” Back when I took a class in trademark law at Harvard, I never dreamed that the question of whether you could register an X-rated trademark would be the subject of important federal court cases. But now it has–and resulted in important rulings by the United States Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Or, as we might now say, Shit Happens®.

FYI: The image at the top of this post is just one of more than 100 pending “shit” trademark registration applications. A similar number of applications have been filed to register trademarks containing a word that rhymes with “truck.”